"Well, the one thing that I submit, the Court, the State should
not be able to come in to say is we are going to permit ourselves
the majority of people in our society fullfull and free rein to
make these decisions for ourselves but there's one minority of
people don't get that decision and the only reason we're going to
give you is we want it that way. We want them to be unequal in their
choices and their freedoms, because we think we should have the
right to commit adultery, to commit fornication, to commit sodomy
and the State should have no basis for intruding into our lives but
we don't want those people over there to have the same right."
Paul M. Smith, an attorney speaking on behalf of John G. Lawrence
and Tyron Garner before Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist in the
Lawrence and Garner v. Texas case at the U.S. Supreme Court
building, March 26, 2003

The fairly recent Lawrence and Garner vs. Texas case, which
was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on March 26th, has sparked
a national debate on whether or not government should be in the
business of prohibiting or even regulating peaceful, consensual
behavior between two consenting adultsparticularly gay and
lesbian couples. In this case, the debate focuses on whether or not
the State of Texas should intervene in the peaceful, consenting
sexual practices between same-sex couples.

The case began when a Harris County sheriff was alerted to an
alleged disturbance that supposedly involved a gun in an apartment
building on September 17th, 1998. When the sheriff stepped into the
home of John G. Lawrence, he spotted Lawrence engaging in sodomy
with Tyron Garner in his bedroom. Immediately the men were placed
under arrest for violating Section 21.06 of the Texas criminal
codespecifically, the state's homosexual conduct lawand were
brought to prison.

At the time the sheriff's spokesman, Capt. Don McWilliams, said, "In
all candor, I don't believe we've ever made an arrest before under
those circumstances." Then he spoke frankly, saying that the law is
the law and it had to be enforced. "We can't give our deputies a
list of statutes we think they should enforce and a list of statutes
we want them to ignore." I suppose, in this case, you can't blame
the police for doing what they did.

The two men, of course, were both arraigned, tried, and convicted on
the charges of violating the state law and were fined $200 each. The
state's criminal code, under which the law is categorized, reads as
the following:

21.06. Homosexual Conduct
(a) A person commits an offense if he engages in deviate sexual
intercourse with another individual of the same sex.
(b) An offense under this section is a Class C misdemeanor

Of course, Lawrence and Garner were forced to spend a night in jail
until they were bailed out. Incidentally, Roger Nancethe man who
filed the false report of the disturbance in Lawrence's homeserved
a minimum sentence of 15 days in prison, even though the
animosity between him and the two men originates from a "personality
dispute." Adding insult to jury, by November Lawrence and Garner had
no choice but to plead no contest to the charges and were fined $125
by the justice of the peace. Eventually the convictions were
challenged and thus overturned by a 3-judge panel of the 14th Court
of Appeal. Nevertheless, the case was re-tried in the same court,
thus resulting in the upholding of the statute.

The men's attorney, Paul Smith, argued before the court that the
state had no business in intervening in the private affairs of its
citizens, especially when it is in regard to their sexual conduct.
He noted that Americans always enjoyed their fundamental right to
engage in sexual behavior in the privacy of their own home, free
from unjustified state interference. He also stipulated that the law
discriminates same-sex couples while giving special protections to
heterosexual couples who commit the same acts. Regardless of how or
what one thinks about this case, he has a point.

The question before us is not whether or not the law should have
been applied in this case or any other case. The question is not
whether or not the state should have applied the law equally to all
couples, regardless of sexual orientation and sexuality. The
question is whether or not government has a moral, ethical, legal,
and constitutional right to impose moral standards on its
communities and whether or not it has a right to violate the rights
of those who are not doing the same to others. The question is also
whether or not government should have the right to intervene in an
individual's right to free association, particularly when such
associations are voluntary and are conducted upon mutual consent.

When the Founders declared their separation from England, they did
so with the intent of creating a government that would be limited in
power and would be restrained to carry out the bidding of its
citizenry. The goal of this new government was to protect the rights
of the individual, and to defend the individual from all enemiesforeign
and domestic. Its purpose was to convict murderers, rapists,
thieves, and other violent criminals who violated the rights of
others. The other part of that purpose was to leave its citizenry
alone if they were engaging in peaceful economic and personal
activities.

Unfortunately, within 200 years the federal republic has become a
shadow of its former self. Instead of a small, limited government
for which Jefferson, Madison, and McHenry called, we now have a
highly bloated, expansive leviathana conglomerate of services
that have been operating in red ink and have been inundated with a
sea of bureaucracy and inefficiency.

The point of this latest controversial exercise is whether
government has any business in deciding whether individuals,
regardless of sexuality and/or sexual preference, should be engaging
in private behavior that may be construed as morally offensive to
others. Conservative collectivists would have the temerity to say,
"Of course not! Such perverse and morally bankrupt behavior is an
affront to family values, even Christian values. This brand of
deviant conduct must be outlawed at all costs!"

We shouldn't be surprised with this collectivist mindset. After all
we are talking about the same conservatives who refuse to recognize
equal rights for gays and lesbians by supporting anti-gay laws and
throw stones at drug addicts and arrest innocent people on the
pretext of alleged possession of illegal narcotics via the morally
bankrupt and perverse civil asset forfeiture laws and the War on
Drugs. These are the same ones who even support a state-mandated
school prayer and the preservation of the phrase "Under God" in the
Pledge of Allegiance in the perverse, morally bankrupt government
schools.

It deserves mentioning that the liberal collectivists are no better,
because they have looked the other way whenever these statist
machinations are utilized for their fullest effect. Since when do
the collectivists on the left and the right lose any sleep for the
incessant loss and deprivation of liberty? One should be scratching
his head to find the answer to that question.

Currently four states zero in on same-sex participants who engaged
in private sexual conduct. Nine other states prohibit sodomy
regardless of the gender of the participants. It is abundantly
obvious that the Texas statute is one not about prohibiting sodomy,
but rather one about outlawing homosexuality. Not that it matters,
but it wasn't until 1973 that the word "homosexuality" was
eliminated from a long list of mental disorders by the American
Psychiatric Association. Before that, same-sex practices were viewed
as taboo by society. It wasn't until decades later that the views on
said practices had changed considerably.

In 1973, the Texas state legislature amended the statute to exclude
heterosexual couples from legal prosecution for committing sodomy
after it was discovered that the said practice was becoming
widespread statewide. The revised statute thus limited its statute
to only persecute same-sex partners who engaged in the practice.

Has it ever occurred to the statists in the legislature that the
Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause forbids states from
denying equal protection under the law to all citizens? Considering
that is a given, the statute will certainly not survive the immense
federal scrutiny by the court. Let's face itthe statute clearly
discriminates same-sex partners from engaging in sodomy, but clearly
gives special protections to heterosexual partners who are free to
engage in that same "deviant sexual behavior."

Nevertheless, it's the collectivists on both the left and the right
that we should be thanking for this mess. They are the ones who
originally lobbied for this statute to be on the books. Because of
them, this is the perfect, opportune time to call for a separation
of sexuality and state.